Curses! You win this time Cincinnati Bell…But I’ll be back…

The perfect storm of bureaucratic obstinacy and institutional incompetence have conspired to keep me with Cincinnati Bell.  I tried to port my number to Time Warner, but I’ve failed.  I went through all the steps at Time Warner, but unbeknownst to me, the only person that can authorize porting of a phone number is the person whose name is on the account.  And that person is Lisa, not me.

Happy Easter

We spent the weekend in Cleveland to meet little Katelaine and celebrate Easter. Little did we know that Blizzard ’07 was on its way. When we approached the entrance ramp to the highway on our way home, there was NO visibility. It felt like we were in the movie Fargo. Luckily, there were no kidnappings or murders like in the movie. Not that we didn’t feel slightly homicidal after being cooped up with Max, Sam and Joe I had no idea that the weather was going to be so crazy. We didn’t pack any winter outerwear, so all fun had to be had indoors. Poor Pete and Holly!! Just what every new parent wants…three extra kids running around throwing paper airplanes and annoying the cat. I don’t think the cat will ever be the same.

Hopefully, we were somewhat helpful since that was our purpose in the journey. It was wonderful to see them. Pete and Holly are already great parents and Kate is perfect.

Eastern Avenue may upgrade

The Enquirer – Eastern Avenue may upgrade

This is an interesting article about the changes happening on the East End in Cincinnati.  It is especially relevant to me since Lisa and I just bought a new house a block up from Eastern Ave.

Residents of new expensive houses on Eastern Ave want to change the name to Riverside Drive.  This is a typical Cincinnati thing.  People who live in Cincinnati think everyone has always lived in Cincinnati and has the same associations with neighborhoods and street names.

I personally like Eastern Avenue.  Riverside Drive sounds generic.  If I wanted to live in a generic house on a generic street in a generic suburb, I would.

The interesting points to me were that property values in the East End have increased 500% in the last 3 years.  And that lots next to Schmidt field are going for 169,000.  Gives me confidence that we bought at the right time.

Send lawyers, guns and money…

Not Beanie Babies!

The Freakonomic guys have an interesting article in the NYT.

Deadweight loss. This is a waste of resources that could’ve been averted without making anyone worse off. An example of this is a crazy aunt giving you a Precious Moments figure. The cost of the figurine is a “deadweight loss”. That is, if your crazy aunt didn’t purchase the gift, no resources would’ve been wasted, and you wouldn’t be any worse off. Imagine that, a company whose entire business model is built around collecting deadweight loss.

So the delta between how much a gift cost, and how much you value it is the deadweight loss. Another way to say this is “give cash”

Breakage: This is a retail industry term for gift card value that is purchased but never redeemed. Best Buy reported 16 million dollars worth last year.

So use your gift cards and send in your rebates. I haven’t had to buy a cup of coffee since October.

There were no utensils but there was Pepsi?

I had no idea that this place was real. Wednesday night we all went to Medieval Times which is the only restaurant I’m aware of where you can have to eat your food with your hands and watch a joust. My boys would’ve loved this. They would’ve thought it was the coolest thing ever. Watching guys dressed up as knights smacking each other with swords, they would’ve been in heaven. I, unfortunately am not a six-year old, so I thought it was bizarre and campy.

(Don’t) Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

The Enquirer – Stricter smoking ban passes

This was a big surprise, Issue 5, a statewide ban on smoking in public places passed. I’m conflicted about the issue.